Well it’s time – after months of sitting under a tree out the front of my place and getting covered in tree sap at an alarming rate, it’s time to swap out the turbos on the Nissan Stagea and hopefully get things back to where they were before the boost disappeared and was replaced by worrying smoke..
Welcome to Stagea Turbo transplant weekend!
So I’ve been walking to my new work the last couple of weeks since moving interstate which means the Stagea has been getting a well earned break. Unfortunately by not going anywhere, it’s collecting cobwebs and tree sap at an alarming rate so when it finally gets back to operational condition (when I finally get round to working out what’s going on with the turbo) a big clean is on the list. Today though our task it to sort out a pretty obvious oil leak as the infamous rocker cover leak rears its ugly oily head once again.
Gotta love interstate trips hey? Especially when just an hour in, something started to sound like an industrial vacuum cleaner going off when you put your foot down in the Stagea. The mechanic from the NRMA suggested it was a loose belt (which doesn’t explain the smoke from what also may be a cooked turbo..) and since only two of the three belts had been changed in the most recent service, now that we’ve arrived safely in Albury it’s time to change the third anyway, tighten them up and see if that’s solved one of the many things left on the to do list…
SALE NOW ON HOLD. CAR DIDN’T SELL IN TIME SO WE’RE TAKING IT TO ALBURY WITH US. WILL BE BACK ON THE MARKET IN A FEW MONTHS. POSSIBLY.
Well it’s going to be a sad day in the Drive Another Day household when this baby moves on – for six and bit years it’s been great at everything from getting the kids to school, carrying gear for my wife’s craft markets and even helping to move house on more than one occasion. But with a location change coming up next year and a lot of driving to see family, I’m looking to sell this and find something that’s more of a long range cruiser and more economical.
So who’s keen on a Nissan Stagea?
It doesn’t rain, it pours. And that’s exactly what it’s been doing weather wise here on the Gold Coast. Which explains why my Nissan Stagea has suddenly come down with a strange cough and become very jerky after coming back from holidays. (Insert your own Corona virus joke here)
I’ve fixed it – although I can’t tell you exactly what did the trick. Possibly one thing, possibly a combination. But here’s a list of things to work through if your car has the same problem.
Welcome to the Stageapedia – an ever growing information repository that will grow as I continue to work on my Nissan Stagea Wagon. (Built after constantly losing notes every time I service mine and have to waste time searching for them again).
If I’ve worked on it, it’s going in here!
(links to Amazon where you can buy various things)
Seriously, less than twenty-four hours since my own Stagea has been let out of the panel beaters all shiny and ready to drive again, I’ve stumbled on the another Stagea that’s gone the completely opposite way and in turn has become ultimate apocalypse cruising war machine you’re ever going to meet outside of the back lot of a Mad Max movie.
When the bombs drop, I’m reaching for the sand blaster..
For those of you reading that that have found themselves in a auto bingle (your fault of the other persons) and followed your insurance claim process from start to end, then you’ll know the process fairly well. For those like me who have had a few scrapes (and near misses) but never had to put an insurance claim before up until now – welcome to my journey. In which I’ve learnt one thing in particular that will could take a bit of hassle out of the process if you find yourself in a similar situation…
‘Smoke? Is that smoke? Oh ffs, what’s going on here?’ my first words spoken rather loudly as I drove up my driveway last night and watched something white and ghost like attempt to snake it’s way out of my bonnet. It’s been a while since Stag hiccups, the last one being the stretched throttle cable a few months ago..
Thankfully it wasn’t smoke, it was steam but it’s still not a great feeling when you lift the lid and half your block has had a coolant related steam bath. And currently resembles some kind of rain forest…
Seriously, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I’ve taken a week of work to move house twenty clicks down the road (and if you want to read about the torture involved and learning how to work with something French, you can check it out right here) and on my first day back at work the Stagea died an idle death at a busy roundabout right in the middle of school drop off time…
Ugh. I suppose it was only a matter of time before my hard working battery decided it was well and truly sick of my antics and threw up the white flag of defeat. It was just annoying that it decided to die in an area where finding a replacement would be a task. Especially when I was already late for work to begin with…
Well it’s come that time finally. Time to roll up the sleeves and tool away as much as possible to the get the Warwagon ready for another roadworthy check. The last check had a couple of niggling little things on there but now that I have both some time and money, join me as we patch things up to pass any scrutineers scrutiny..
Once upon a time I was getting pretty rubbish fuel economy in my C34 Nissan Stagea – mileage up there with my old Rx7 which honestly wasn’t that great (just a sniff over 400ks to a tank). However once I swapped out the dead o2 sensor things improved slightly but given the short trips too and from work that really abused the fuel tank, it still wasn’t anything to write home about.
But now that I’m driving 35kms each way to work and back daily on the great highway known as the M1, would this be a better test of how much juice the Warwagon sips on from fill up to petrol light?
Lets find out – roll on the Stagea fuel economy test!
Today we’d like to send out a huge thanks to the team behind GTR Registry for their latest edition to their site – namely the massive amount of awesome stuff you can find out about your own Nissan Stagea!
I’ve been sneezing my absolute head off recently without really knowing why. Suspecting something in the car might possibly be doing it, I began the hunt to see if the Stagea cabin filters were actually filtering and not taking the decade off..
I’d owned my Nissan Stagea for all of 3 days when a tripled light warning flashed up one night on the way to a friends house. Not ideal considering one of those lights was ‘check engine’ and I figured I’d bought pure citrus.
After a quick Googling it seemed at least one of my coil packs were having a rough time…not an end of the world scenario but not ideal for proper running..
New Years Eve – I should have been putting some ice on the Coronas, party pies in the oven and some resolutions on my to do list in preparation for howling at the moon around midnight. Instead I was driving from town to town playing a game of ‘Do I have enough juice to make it to the next service station?’
AKA Now that I’ve finally gotten around to replacing my oxygen sensor in the Stagea, lets make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing.
So I just bought a 2000 Nissan Stagea (more about the overall car coming soon) and the only problem I’ve come across so far is a supreme lack of illumination under the Stagea shifter (the automatic shifter P-R-N-D-3-2 gear panel). Luckily it’s a pretty easy fix and only takes a few minutes to get it to show up in the dark once more.